Shining a Light
Andrew Olendzki
tricycle
The Buddha offers more
than a dozen convincing arguments against racism in a conversation
with the brahmins of his day who saw themselves as superior to
others. These arguments focus on the lack of any real biological or
psychological distinction between people of different castes, and
point to social convention as the more obvious source of prejudice.
You can read about this in the Assalayana Sutta
(Middle Length Discourse 93), but most people these days
hardly need convincing of something so evident.
We do face the more
challenging problem of how first to uncover the socially
constructed prejudices we all harbor and then to transform them,
not at this level of intellectual argument but at the deeper level
of changing emotional and behavioral responses. It is not about
changing views (the aggregate of perception), but of
reconstructing patterns of habitual reaction (the aggregate of
formations). Fortunately, the Buddha bequeathed to us a
powerful tool for doing this: mindfulness.
Psychology has
demonstrated clearly that some of what we do is conscious and some
is unconscious. That is to say, we are consciously aware of a
narrow band of our experience as it unfolds, but most of what
happens is formulated out of view and emerges apparently on its own
from the mysterious depths of the psyche to surge into behavior
unhindered by awareness. Our views and reactions are formed as they
appear, based on patterns laid down in the past, and consciousness
is more a matter of observing what is already unfolding than of
deciding what will take place.
Mindfulness practice
involves training the ability to observe what is happening within
us in the present moment with an attitude of patience, kindness,
and equanimity. As different bodily sensations or feeling tones or
thoughts arise into conscious awareness, we “watch along with”
(anupassati) them, or “gaze evenly upon”
(upekkhati) them, or are simply “aware of”
(pajanati) and “fully experience” (patisamvedati)
them. If we get angry at what we see, or if any sort of response
rooted in attraction or aversion occurs, then we are thrust out of
mindful awareness and get carried away by an unhealthy emotional
response. Eventually we may notice that this is happening and
return the attention gently back to observing without
judgment.
This is familiar
territory to meditators. Now let’s see how this might scale from
the realm of internal personal experience to a collective—even
global—practice of mindfulness. When something is caught on video
and then digitally shared with a universal audience, this can be
seen as bringing to conscious awareness what might otherwise remain
unknown and unknowable to all but the immediate participants. The
Web is our collective mind, and the media sites that allow millions
to see what one person has recorded can be regarded as supporting
an emerging form of global meditation.
Witnessing an
atrocity, observing injustice in action, or otherwise directly
encountering the things that have historically been invisible is a
way of shining the light of awareness into the dark corners of our
world—much as meditation shines a light into the unexamined shadows
of our mind. But the collective challenge is as daunting as the
individual one: how do we bring patience, kindness, and equanimity
to what we see instead of having it trigger and release the
reservoirs of anger and hatred lurking within that are so ready and
eager to erupt?
It is natural for fury
to arise in the face of injustice, natural because our psyches are
inhabited by primitive instincts adapted to survival at almost any
cost. Anger is empowering, and conventional wisdom tells us that
righteous anger is justified in such circumstances and is even
necessary to move the mountains of discrimination, exploitation,
and disrespect that perpetuate injustice. This may be true, but is
it therefore the healthiest way to proceed? The Buddha was pointing
us in a different direction. He encouraged us to acknowledge such
feelings, but to then let go of them and respond instead with
compassion and wisdom. Yes, laws and attitudes need to be changed,
but how do we do that without harming ourselves in the
process?
The challenge and
promise of mindfulness practice is not simply to become aware of
things, but to do so with a particular attitude or emotional
tone—one that is confident, benevolent, mindful, ethical, tranquil,
equanimous. It does no good and some harm to blame yourself for
your attention wandering off the breath, or to get annoyed at the
person behind you for coughing, or to resent the fact that a pain
is arising in your knee. In just the same way, it is not helpful
and can make things worse to erupt in hatred toward the mob that
stones an innocent woman, the officer that shoots an unarmed black
man, or the fanatic who executes a helpless captive. The
object of awareness may be reprehensible, but the
attitude with which we are aware of it is a different
matter and shapes who we are and what will happen next. All the
great reformers of our time (Gandhi, Mandela, King) knew the
importance of this distinction and made it a cornerstone of their
life’s work.
One can know with
wisdom that these acts are deeply wrong, feel unbounded
compassion for the victims of the atrocity, conjure up the
energy needed to see that the perpetrators are brought to
justice, and work with determination and even joy
to change the conditions enabling such transgressions to occur.
These are healthy emotions and can be just as effective as their
unhealthy counterparts. Taking these steps on as a practice, either
when examining our own inner prejudices or when exposing the
injustices of the world, marks the difference between being swept
along on the flood and working against the stream.
As the Buddha put it
in several verses from the Samyutta Nikaya
(11.4):
It is always a big
mistake,
to return anger for anger.
Not giving anger for anger,
one wins a double victory.
One behaves for the
good of both:
oneself and the other person.
Knowing well the other’s anger, one
is mindful and remains calm.
In this way one is
healing both:
oneself and the other person.
The people who think “What a fool!”
just don’t understand the dhamma.
